Google’s parent company has unveiled a satisfactory financial statement for the first quarter of 2022. It is nevertheless aware that the war in Ukraine is weighing on its advertising revenues.
The giant Google, or more particularly its parent company Alphabet, presented this Tuesday afternoon its financial results for the first three months of the year 2022. If the good health of the Mountain View firm is undeniable, it reports a certain shortfall in the first quarter, due to the war in Ukraine. This has in particular harmed the advertising revenues of the company and its YouTube video service.
A turnover that climbs more moderately for Google
” During the first quarter, we saw strong growth in Search and Cloud in particular, which helps both individuals and businesses as digital transformation continues “, commented the president and CEO of Google and Alphabet, Sundar Pichai, when detailing the results of the American juggernaut.
In the first quarter of 2022, the Alphabet group generated revenue of 68.01 billion dollars (around 64.5 billion euros), up 23% compared to Q1 2021 (55.31 billion dollars). ). Growth is significant, but much lower than a year ago (when it was 34% compared to Q1 2020), and lower than in the last quarter of 2021 (+32%). How to explain this “slowdown” (all things considered) of Google? We’ll see that in a moment.
On the earnings side anyway, Alphabet continues to amass cash, with net income hitting $16.44 billion in the first quarter. This is still a slight decrease compared to Q1 2021 (-8.3%).
Slow YouTube, booming Google Cloud
Google has certainly made good progress on Search, with 39.62 billion dollars in sales in the last quarter against 31.88 billion a year earlier. However, revenues from YouTube have “capped” (all things considered) bis) to $6.87 billion in Q1 2022, a moderate increase of 14.39%. This is a far cry from certain disproportionate developments observed during the pandemic. In the fourth quarter of 2021, for example, YouTube had brought in $8.6 billion for Alphabet, up 25.4% year-on-year. So, what explains this slowdown?
Google has taken advantage of the pandemic to capture the attention of its users and advertisers, and now the giant is suffering the consequences of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It must be said that the company has stopped its sales on the Kremlin side, and advertisers have reduced the sails with a seriously cut budget since the end of February.
As a result, Google Cloud revenues are now catching up with those generated by YouTube. In the last quarter, the cloud division of the American firm generated a record turnover of 5.82 billion dollars, a very marked increase (+44%) over one year. Note that revenues from Google Workspace (Gmail, Drive, Sheets and others) are included in the latter.
Finally, the “Other” line of Google’s quarterly report shows a slight contraction in sales of applications, hardware (we think in particular of Pixel phones) and subscriptions. These fell to 6.89 billion dollars, a drop of 2.3% over one year.
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Source : Alphabet
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